DIOGENES: In Search Of An Honest Politician!

DIOGENES invites you to pull up a chair on this rainy day and read
posts from around the world.
The writing may lean to the right...but that's the way Diogenes wants it!
You may leave your opinion,
but Diogenes rarely changes his! WELCOME!

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Judge orders Obama administration not to enforce HHS mandate!

Following a federal circuit court’s ruling that the contraception mandate is likely unconstitutional, a federal judge ordered President Obama’s administration not to attempt to force a company challenging the mandate to comply with the rule.
The government is “temporarily ENJOINED and RESTRAINED from any effort to apply or enforce, as to [Hobby Lobby], the substantive requirements imposed in 42 U.S.C. § 300gg-13(a)(4) and at issue in this case, or the penalties related thereto, pending a hearing on plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction,” U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton ordered today. He based that ruling on the 10th Circuit Court’s conclusion that Hobby Lobby has “established a likely violation of [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act].”
“Hobby Lobby and the Green family faced the terrible choice of violating their faith or paying massive fines starting this Monday morning,” said Kyle Duncan, General Counsel with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, who represents Hobby Lobby. “We are delighted that both the 10th Circuit and the district court have spared them from this unjust burden on their religious freedom.”

America is in Decline!

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. -- Ronald Reagan

Those who attack American culture and tradition should recall that historically, freedom and prosperity are the aberrations, not servitude and poverty. Our nation's success is not a happy accident or part of a natural, unstoppable progression that can't be changed. Nothing could be more foolish than to abandon the traditions, religion, work ethic, family structure, moral code and culture that made this country wealthy and free while expecting to continue to reap the rewards of practices we now scorn as too demanding and judgmental. What we sow as a nation, we should expect to reap and the crop these days isn't looking very good.

2) Fears that America would go bankrupt in the next few years used to be a fringe belief. Now, Doomsday Preppers is a TV show, gold, guns and survival seeds are being widely advertised and vast numbers of Americans are making decisions about purchases, investments, and saving money that take into account the possibility that the country could bankrupt within the next decade or two.

3) "Half of all children born to women under 30 in America now are illegitimate. Three in 10 white children are born out of wedlock, as are 53 percent of Hispanic babies and 73 percent of black babies." -- Pat Buchanan

4) "The IMF calculates that to maintain the present spending trend the United States will have to nearly double (88 percent increase) all federal taxes to maintain theoretical solvency." -- Kevin Williamson

12) Forty seven percent of Americans don't pay income tax. That means not only are the poor not paying their own way, a significant number of Americans in the middle class aren't being asked to pay in taxes what they receive in government services.

13) There is a 100 trillion -- with a "T" -- gap between what our government is currently promising to pay to retiring senior citizens and the money it's on track to have. Just to give you a little perspective, our current national debt is approaching 17 trillion dollars.

14) Only about 30% of Americans think the country is on the right track.

18) "Consider this: the U.S. economy has created 2.6 million jobs since June 2009. In the same period, 3.1 million workers have signed up for disability benefits. Back in 1992 there was one person on disability benefits for every 36 people in employment. Now the ratio is 1 to 16." -- Niall Ferguson

19) Gun sales hit record highs in 2012. That's partially because of fears of gun control, but it's also because of a growing fear that a breakdown in societal order is coming down the road.

20) "John Kichen of the U.S. Treasury and Menzie Chinn of the University of Wisconsin published a study in 2010 entitled: Financing U.S. Debt: Is There Enough Money in the World — and At What Cost? The fact that sane men are even asking this question ought to be deeply disturbing. As to the answer, foreign official holdings of U.S. Treasury securities have usually been less than 5 percent of the rest of the world’s GDP. By 2009, they were up to 7 percent. By 2020, Kitchen and Chinn project them to rise to 19 percent of the rest of the world’s GDP, which they say is….do-able. Whether the rest of the world will want to do it is another matter. A future that presumes the rest of the planet will sink a fifth of its GDP into U.S. Treasuries is no future at all." -- Mark Steyn

N.C. Commissioner Has No Regrets in Seeking ‘Non-White Male’ for Public Position!

Although some see it as a clear-cut case of race discrimination, Kim Ratliff, a County Commissioner in Mecklenburg County, N.C., doesn’t regret saying that the next county manager should be a “non-white male.”
Ratliff’s comments were made last Friday when she commented on the departure of longtime county manager Harry Jones, WISTV.com reports.
The County Commissioner said other county officials should learn from Jones’ tenure as county manager.
“There were some people the manager was not talking to. There were county commissioners who were not talking to the manager,” she said, adding that the future county manager must have open lines of communication with all colleagues.
She continued, saying that she’d like to see “someone who is diverse – hopefully someone outside of North Carolina would be ideal for me.” Ratliff added that the county needs a “non-white male who can good working relations with all people.”

Why Liberals Like Affirmative Action

The Supreme Court punted on the University of Texas affirmative action case the other day. But the issue won't seem to go away - except in California. California? Yes, California. Although seen as a bastion of liberalism in the public mind, the state passed proposition 209, banning affirmative action, 17 years ago. So what happened? Are California university campuses today completely lily white? Or all Asian?
Hardly. As explained in a study for the Cato Institute, with the exception of one or two "elite" institutions, California university campuses are more diverse today than before the ban, and the graduation rates of minority students are much higher. But how is this possible if the ban says affirmative action was neither achieving more diversity nor helping black and Hispanic students acquire a college diploma?
That is exactly the thesis of a new book by UCLA law professor and civil rights activist Richard Sander and journalist Stuart Taylor, "Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts the Students It's Intended to Help and Why the Universities Won't Admit It."
Mismatch works like this. Minority students who should have attended an Ivy League school such as Harvard or Yale are instead admitted to MIT and Cal Tech, where SAT scores are near perfect. Then to fill the void in the Ivy League those schools accept students who should have attended Southern Methodist University (SMU) or Emory. Those schools then admit students who should have attended lower ranking state colleges and junior colleges. In the end, just about every minority student ends up at the wrong school. They are admitted to institutions where other students are better prepared than they are. As a result, they find themselves at the bottom of the class. Even if they don't get discouraged and drop out, the entire set up reinforces racial stereotypes.
A Wall Street Journal book review recounts Professor Sander's earlier analysis:

[O]f the troubling performance of many black law-school students at UCLA in the late 1990s. About half of them, he found, ended up in the bottom 10th of the class and achieved only a 50% pass rate in bar exams, compared with 90% for whites. The reason? Many had been admitted with large racial preferences. Though a mismatched undergraduate might switch to an easier major without punishing anything more than his dreams, failing the bar exam could ruin a career.

So if the evidence is clear and overwhelming, why are liberals so committed to affirmative action? For white liberals, I think it's all about guilt. Some years ago Ken Pye, who was president of SMU at the time, explained why getting minority kids to the campus was his number one goal.
"White students from middle and upper middle class families can't get a well-rounded education if they only encounter other students who are just like they are," he explained to me. Good point, I thought. But surely black students have legitimate goals of their own, other than providing a richer learning environment for white kids? Is being at SMU, even if they are scoring at the bottom of their class, good for the "beneficiaries" of affirmative action? Turns out that it isn't. And are white kids at SMU even asking for more diversity? Is that a major objective of their college experience? I don't think so.
The pressure for affirmative action comes mainly from the faculty. It seems professors don't like the idea of walking across the campus and seeing no black students. And it turns out that it really doesn't matter who the black students are or where they come from. Although one encounters the inevitable references to the "vestiges of slavery," Henry Louis Gates, Jr. says that less than half of the black students at Harvard are unambiguous descendants of slaves. The rest are foreigners or children of mixed parentage.
While we're at it, the evidence isn't very kind to affirmative action in the workplace either. See the very excellent book on this whole subject by former CBO director June O'Neill and her husband, David O'Neill:

Take the difference in pay for black and white men. The O'Neill's find that the difference narrows to just 4% after adjusting for years of schooling and it reduces to zero when you factor in test scores on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT), which is basically an intelligence test. In other words, after adjusting for just two factors that cause people to be different, the pay gap between black and white men disappears entirely. Among women, the gap actually reverses after adjusting for education and AFQT scores. Black women get paid more than white women. Among Hispanic and white men, the pay gap narrows to 8% after adjusting for years of schooling and disappears altogether with the addition of AFQT scores. Among the women these two variables cause the pay gap to reverse. As in the case of race, Hispanic women are actually paid somewhat more than white women.

In other words, affirmative action at work isn't correcting a problem because there is no problem to be corrected. By the way, we should all welcome these findings. Granting favors based on skin color should be seen as a clear violation of the 14th Amendment. That it doesn't even help the people it is intended to help means that following the substitution is practical as well as being mandatory.

And just who did they get there their numbers from any way – Sarah Palin? And speaking of Sarah, I hear she’s a little fired up over the direction the R-word leaders are taking. Did you read what she said?

And that’s not all:

Folks like me are barely hanging on to our enlistment papers in any political party – and it’s precisely because flip-flopping political actions like amnesty force us to ask how much more bull from both the elephants in the Republican Party and the jackasses in the Democrat Party we have to swallow before these political machines totally abandon the average commonsense hardworking American. Now we turn to watch the House. If they bless this new “bi-partisan” hyper-partisan devastating plan for amnesty, we’ll know that both private political parties have finally turned their backs on us.It will then be time to show our parties’ hierarchies what we think of being members of either one of these out-of-touch, arrogant, and dysfunctional political machines.

(SNIP)

No wonder Sarah’s torqued off. It sounds like she feels like she’s been sold out by the wolves in the fold.

And as you know, wolves are a big problem in Alaska and need to be culled out in order to protect the innocents from their ravenous behavior.

(SNIP)

I don’t know about you, butt if it were up to me I’d probably go with the bears next time around. Grizzlies I think.

Military preparedness suffers yet Obama takes $100 million vacation

This week, retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula penned a scorching op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, pointing out that military options being planned for Syria ignore the effect of sequestration on the U.S military at home. One suggestion was a limited no-fly zone over Syria with Air Force and Naval aircraft flying out of Jordon. One of the facts being ignored is that aircrews are not flying training missions to maintain their proficiency to fly, fight and win with air supremacy. Right now, the biggest unreported, no-fly zone is already up and running–it’s the one in the United States! US bases are being ordered to reduce flying time, training and maintenance, greatly compromising America’s air combat readiness.

Gen. Deptula, the former head of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance on the Air Staff, was one of the principle planners of Operation Desert Storm and a joint task force commander during Operation Northern Watch. He served as Director of the Combined Air Operations Center for Operation Enduring Freedom. He has flown more than 3000 combat hours.

The real danger of sequestration begins when politicians and the American public believe that budget cuts do not affect combat forces.“Sequestration was designed (by Obama) to be so irresponsible that Congress would be forced to prevent its implementation. Now that it has been implemented, the danger is that Washington will begin to think the military cuts are tolerable.” In order to fight and win a war troops must constantly train for war. Perpetually idle airmen are not ready to effectively engage the enemy.

NFL says no to promoting Obamacare

The National Football League is used to big, bruising battles. But on Friday, it announced that it was likely staying out of one of the roughest fights in Washington: the war over Obamacare.
Earlier this week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius disclosed that the Obama administration was in talks with the sports organization to help promote the law, which enters a new phase as advocates prepare to begin enrolling millions of Americans in health insurance this fall.
On Friday, Republican leaders in the Senate issued a stern warning to sports organizations not to partner with the White House on an issue marked by such “divisiveness and persistent unpopularity.”
Asked about the congressional letter, NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said the league had not made any commitment to the administration.
“We have responded to the letters we received from members of Congress to inform them we currently have no plans to engage in this area and have had no substantive contact with the administration about [the health-care law’s] implementation,” he said in an e-mail.
The NFL’s decision is the latest blow to the administration over the health-care law, which faces enormous hurdles as key portions go into effect in the coming months. Chief among the challenges is the political opposition to the law, which has persisted since its passage in 2010 despite hopes on the part of advocates that it would eventually be accepted as the law of the land. . .

Reality Check: We need abortion because pregnancy makes you fat!

Women need abortion, we’re told, because it is just terrible and awful to force an unwanted pregnancy onto a woman. It’s pretty much the worst thing in the world, and there should be no discussion of personal responsibility (because clearly it’s cruel to expect women to abstain from sex if they aren’t ready for a baby).

There should also be no discussion of options beyond abortion (because adoption is unreasonable and keeping the baby would be impossible). A blogger at RH Reality Check, Natasha Chart, was pregnant and kept her son, who presumably was wanted. But her experience with pregnancy gave her a laundry list of reasons why women need abortion. Pregnancy makes you fat! And your feet get big! And it’s just such a hassle to do all the testing!
On the less serious, but financially inconvenient, side, I’d started expanding past even the maternity clothes I bought early in pregnancy. By the end, none of my shoes fit over my swollen feet. It’s not a medical concern, but not everyone can readily afford to just turn over a wardrobe twice in less than a year, especially when there are all these exciting new expenses for baby clothes and supplies.
Nearly a month after the birth, I still can’t fit into my pre-maternity clothes or bear to wear a real bra, and I’m really glad that I don’t have to show up anywhere looking professional for a little while yet. If I can’t be somewhere in an outfit that includes a nursing tank right now, I can’t be there.
… The results of my first glucose tolerance test were high, so they wanted to do a follow-up. Since a three-hour glucose tolerance test after fasting seemed like a bad idea for a patient with a history of passing out during blood draws on an empty stomach, my doctor had me test myself four times a day at specific times and follow a meal plan for gestational diabetics so they could settle the question.
I turned out not to have gestational diabetes, but the exercise was a huge hassle.
Swollen feet! Not immediately fitting back into your pre-pregnancy clothes! Having to take glucose tests! The horror!
Chart then goes on to talk about all of the expenses that come with a pregnancy. It’s undeniable that, without insurance, it could be expensive – the hospital bills for prenatal care and delivery could run into the tens of thousands (though they don’t always). Chart also mentions time off for recovery, which usually runs about six weeks. Chart seems to think this means that women are completely incapacitated and incapable of doing anything until those six weeks are over, but thankfully, that’s not quite the case. She talks a lot about the hardships this would inflict on women who don’t have insurance or are living paycheck to paycheck. The huge majority of mothers who give life to their children never regret it.
The huge majority of mothers who give life to their children never regret it.
Clearly, this shows that women should be able to get abortions if they want them. Right? One thing Chart never mentions is adoption, which could alleviate many of the economic issues, as well as the long-term stress of having to raise a child you aren’t ready for.
Earlier this month, the New York Times wrote a story about a study which pro-aborts crowed over. The study showed what happens when women who tried to get abortions were unable to do so. Eighty of the women in the study reported not having enough money to meet their basic needs, and 1 in 10 were on welfare. In the short term, keeping the baby caused stress, anxiety, and other negative feelings in the women, and it also had a tremendous economic impact on them – thus the crowing from pro-aborts.
Six months later, though, those anxiety levels decreased. What was rarely mentioned was how the women felt in the long-term. Only 5% of women regretted having their baby. Almost half denied ever trying to get an abortion.
But women need abortion. Why? Because their feet might swell, and they’ll gain weight, and things might be hard for a while. These trivial things are supposed to be the reasons why women should be able to kill their unborn children?

White House Study Finds Guns Save Lives!

But a new report commissioned by the White House titled Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-related Violence suggests what many self defense gun proponents have been saying for years. The report, ordered under one of President Obama’s 23 Executive Orders signed in the wake of the Sandy Hook incident, asked the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the National Research Council and other federal agencies to identify the “most pressing problems in firearms violence.”

To the surprise of the authors and those who would no doubt have used the report to further restrict access to personal defense firearms, the study found that gun ownership actually saves lives and those who have a firearm at their disposal improve their chances of survival and reduce their chance of injury in the event they are confronted by a violent criminal.

Obama Compares Nelson Mandela To George Washington

PRETORIA, South Africa , June 29, 2013 Although President Obama will not get a chance to see Nelson Mandela on his trip to South Africa, he is using his historic visit to pay tribute to the man he calls a hero to the world and will meet today with the Mandela family.
At a joint press conference with South African President Jacob Zuma this morning, President Obama spoke extensively about Mandela's legacy.
"Our thoughts and those of Americans and people all around the world are with Nelson Mandela and his family and all of South Africans," Obama said. "The struggle here for freedom, Madiba's moral courage, this country's historic transition to a free nation has been a personal inspiration to me, an inspiration to the world, and it continues to be."
"Mandela shows what was possible when a priority is placed on human dignity, respect for law, that all people are treated equally," Obama said.
"And what Nelson Mandela also stood for is that the well-being of the country is more important than the interests of any one person," Obama continued. "George Washington is admired because after two terms he said enough, I'm going back to being a citizen. There were no term limits, but he said I'm a citizen. I served my time. And it's time for the next person, because that's what democracy is about. And Mandela similarly was able to recognize that, despite how revered he was, that part of this transition process was greater than one person."

PALIN WARNS HOUSE GOP: DON'T BETRAY WORKING CLASS BY PASSING AMNESTY

One day after the Senate passed its immigration reform bill, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin warned the House on Friday to not betray working class Americans by passing a bill that will lower wages and raise unemployment without securing the borders.
"Now we turn to watch the House. If they bless this new 'bi-partisan' hyper-partisan devastating plan for amnesty, we’ll know that both private political parties have finally turned their backs on us," Palin wrote in a Facebook post that also urged Americans to read the Breitbart News piece that detailed the importance of the working class vote. "It will then be time to show our parties’ hierarchies what we think of being members of either one of these out-of-touch, arrogant, and dysfunctional political machines."
Palin called the "amnesty bill the Senate passed yesterday" a "sad betrayal of working class Americans of every ethnicity who will see their wages lowered and their upward mobility" as well.
"And yet we still do not have a secured border," she said. "This Senate-approved amnesty bill rewards lawbreakers and won’t solve any problems--as the CBO report notes that millions of more illegal immigrants will continue to flood the U.S. in coming years."
Palin said independent-minded conservatives like her are "barely hanging on to our enlistment papers in any political party" because the "flip-flopping political actions like amnesty force us to ask how much more bull from both the elephants in the Republican Party and the jackasses in the Democrat Party we have to swallow before these political machines totally abandon the average commonsense hardworking American."
Palin has signaled in recent weeks that she is not going to allow Washington politicians to betray America's working class, especially if they specifically campaigned to put border security first and vote against amnesty.

No, Really!

OBAMA ADMIN SUPPORTS VOTER IDS… FOR KENYANS

Here’s a shocker: The Obama Administration proudly supports the existence of voter ID laws… for Kenyans. For Americans, however, it is still, somehow, racist.
While the Obamas and their extended family continue to tour Africa on the taxpayer dime, the Obama Administration released a fact sheet, touting the U.S. support Africa has received to help create honest and legitimate elections.
The fact sheet, entitled, “U.S. Support for Strengthening Democratic Institutions, Rule of Law, and Human Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa,” touts the $53 million spent to help 500,000 people gain legal identification for voting which is a prerequisite for voting in Kenya.

Conservative backlash greets US immigration bill

Conservatives have drawn a bull's eye on the immigration bill passed by the US Senate, insisting the landmark measure will fail as is and vowing political retribution against Republicans who voted for it.

The bipartisan immigration reform bill passed 68-32 in the Senate Thursday with support from 14 Republicans, many of whom now face accusations they let down conservatives opposed to legislation that lays a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented people.

Those lawmakers, including high-profile figures like Senator Marco Rubio, "will have to go back home and explain the votes they cast, and explain to their constituents why it's not amnesty, even though it is," Dan Holler of Heritage Action, a lobbying arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation, told AFP on Friday.

The 'Garbage Truck' of the Human Brain: New Clues to Treating Alzheimer's

The brain works like a complex machine, sending electrical signals that allow us to perceive and understand the world around us. Now, scientists have discovered a new system in this brain that acts as a "garbage truck," removing waste that might affect the brain. The findings could have large implications for treating neurological disorders like Alzheimer's disease.
The body defends the brain like a fortress, ringing it with a complex system of gateways that control which molecules can enter and exit. This "blood-brain barrier" was known to exist for quite some time, but it's only now that researchers are beginning to understand how it functions. This latest system for waste removal, for example, is just part of the wider picture.
Waste removal is an essential biological function. The lymphatic system, a circulatory network of organs and vessels, performs this task in most of the body. Yet the lymphatic system doesn't extend to the brain. Because of this, scientists have never fully understood what the brain does with its own waste.
In order to better understand how the brain might remove waste, the researchers used a new imaging technology called two-photon microscopy. This allowed them to peer deep within the living brains of mice. The scientists found what amounts to an extensive plumbing system responsible for flushing waste from throughout the brain.
The brain itself is surrounded by a membrane called the arachnoid and bathed in cerebral spinal fluid (CSF). CSF flows into the interior of the brain through the same pathways as the arteries that carry blood and is drawn into brain tissue via a system of conduits that are controlled by a type of support cells in the brain, known as glia--in this case, astrocytes. The CSF is flushed through the brain tissue at high speeds, which sweeps away excess "garbage" that might be located in the brain. The scientists decided to coin this newly discovered system the "glymphatic system."
Yet this system doesn't just tell us a bit more about the brain. It also may have implications for diseases associated with it.
"The idea that 'dirty brain' diseases like Alzheimer's may result from a slowing down of the glymphatic system as we age is a completely new way to think about neurological disorders," said Maiken Nedergaard, one of the researchers, in a news release. "It also presents us with a new set of targets to potentially increase the efficiency of glymphatic clearance and, ultimately, change the course of these conditions."
The findings are published in the journal Science.

Dangerous Times: Obama's Perversity

In economics, a "perverse effect" means getting what you don't want. If McDonald's makes an executive decision to sell lousy burgers and ends up bankrupt, that is a perverse decision. Markets are tough on companies that act perversely, but the Amazonian jungle of government allows perverse incentives to flourish and spread. In our current state of national perversity we have massive voter ignorance and apathy (and therefore no punishment for misgovernment), a Senate that passes critical legislation without even bothering to read it, an income tax code written by special-interest lobbyists over decades, and an IRS that is so deeply politicized that voter outrage has no visible impact at all. Add a one-party media and government control over one seventh of the economy coming up, and you know we're not going to come out of this unscathed.
Chicago is basically a one-party regime. How can you tell if you're living under one-party rule? Your media aren't going to tell you. Your government isn't either. Your schools are part of the mob monopoly. But there are signs: the biggest one is that open scandals and crimes have no consequences. We all know Holder is a perverse attorney general, that the EPA is run by scientific know-nothings, that Wall Street has high-level lines running into this administration, that "green technology" contradicts the known facts of physics, and that "catastrophic climate change" is a self-serving farce.
This presidency is practically defined by its perversity. When this administration gets caught with its pants down, it just becomes even more grandiose.
All the scandals the media decided to expose after the election have not changed any behavior. All the costs of ObamaCare are scheduled to come due after the election, and there must be millions of Americans still deluded enough to believe they didn't buy...

"Coexist" bumper sticker explained

We've all seen those annoying, smarmy, condescending coexist bumper stickers on the back of Priuses, Subaru's, etc. driven by low info people trying desperately to feel good about themselves. Well here's a breakdown of the true meaning of these wastes of recycled paper....